Sustainable would be square glass bottles that are reused. Little squat bottles 5 inches tall and by 3 by 3 square from the top. Easy to hold and pour, high packing efficiency.
It’s pretty disingenious of them to frame this in such a way as to tout the virtues of plastic. We can make rectangular glass bottles and that not only takes less energy to transport but is also more environmentally friendly than PET, but they didn’t explore that option or even suggest it to the reader for consideration
I think this neglects a major reason why most people buy a bottle of wine. It’s reinventing boxed wine and it isn’t a coincidence that only the cheapest wine usually comes in boxes.
We said the same thing about corks.
NZ (and Australia?) doesn’t really do corks any more. For sparkling wines, yes. But I’ve not touched my bottle opener in years.
We also sell (some?) wines in PET bottles, but they’re usually single serve/hotel-minibar bottles so not mainstream.
If there’s a cost incentive to the winery, and no impact of quality to their product, I think they’ll slowly push for a change.
But first, they’ve got to ascertain it won’t affect the product.